The God Tattoo: Untold Tales from the Twilight Reign (31 page)

As a little girl she’d nagged her father into allowing her professional training rather than the staid, formal version girls of breeding were normally permitted. It had instilled an
athletic grace few of her peers possessed and even fewer of their mothers would approve of.

‘Ah, Father, you dangerous progressive,’ she said with a grin, looking over the balustrade beside her with a burgeoning sense of pride. ‘First allowing such unwomanly
behaviour, now bringing learning to the unwashed masses.’

On the floor below there was a mess of boxes and workmen’s tools, but in Gennay’s eyes it was a dream slowly taking shape. Shelves on the walls, drawers waiting to be filled –
she could picture the finished product in her mind and had been able to for months now.

On the point of collapse less than a year ago, the old building had been derelict and damp. This winter might have seen it all fall inwards under the stinging ocean breeze and freezing
temperatures, but the roof was now repaired and strong once more; the marauding cold of Narkang’s streets tamed to a manageable chill.

‘New life,’ Gennay whispered to the hush of the empty building, ‘we’re breathing new life into this city, whatever they might say about us.’

The young woman pulled her shawl back up over her shoulders and stepped closer to the fireplace. The library was a massive building and from her desk Gennay could observe proceedings in the
large central hall around which everything else had been built. Despite the repairs, Gennay still worked with a shawl over her head and fingerless woollen gloves. After nightfall the fire took an
edge off the cold, nothing more, but that made all the difference to a woman forced to work later than her employees.

Once a guildhouse for shipping merchants, the building was in three distinct parts – not quite forming three sides of a square, while an eight-foot wall penned the remaining ground to form
a cobbled courtyard. This part, the largest of the three, consisted of the oversized hallway over which Gennay now looked, to serve as a library in conjunction with what had once been a large
meeting chamber just off the main room. Behind Gennay were another few rooms to be used for private study, while the newer north wing would house the three school rooms where the best and brightest
of the city’s children would be educated.

The oldest part of the building, the guildsmen offices, would house the scribes and copyists who would earn the money required to keep the library going, penmanship and learning always being in
demand in a trading port. Gennay’s father, Count Bastin Thonal, had bought the building and paid for its renovation, in addition to amassing the books and scrolls for the library, including
copies of his entire personal collection.

It was to be his legacy, his gift to the city he’d found wealth in, but – ever the businessman – he’d decided against an annual drain on his income, preferring to force
the library to be self-sufficient whether or not his eldest child was its administrator.

Gennay reached out to the fire and warmed her hands for a moment longer before returning to her desk to pack up. It could easily be left for the morning, the night watchman would not disturb
anything, but still she tidied every night. She ordered and stacked her correspondence then arranged the books and papers so even the strictest of her childhood nannies could have found no cause
for complaint, all ready for her return. One pile for each of the library’s functions with a fourth for the building works, each consisting of half-a-dozen or more sheaves bound with coloured
ribbon.

Before she stood again from the desk, Gennay’s eyes lingered on one of the piles, the one concerning the school. The matter grew more complicated every time she considered what would be
taught, how and by whom. Narkang was not presently a centre for learning and even finding capable secular teachers was proving a struggle.

‘A shame my brother doesn’t have patience for the efforts of others,’ Gennay said to the library at large. ‘He would make this so much easier.’

She spoke without rancour, loving Emin unreservedly, but the young man had always been irritated by people failing to grasp concepts as quickly as he did, let alone his few attempts to teach
anyone. When Emin was young his father had been forced to beat him for throwing an apple at a cousin, because the man hadn’t been able to keep up with an explanation given so rapidly it was
barely intelligible.

‘And that’s typical of my brother,’ Gennay said with a laugh as she lowered an iron cover over the fire’s embers. ‘How many beatings are given with a slight sense
of pride? At the age of twelve Emin blackens a man’s eye from over a dozen yards away – earning himself a new bow and the finest instructor the following week.’

She picked a lamp up from the desk and started off down the wide stair that curled around the north end of the hall, eyes on the new stone lintel above the main door to the south wing. Halfway
down however she stopped, sensing a slight gust of wind run up the worn steps towards her. Gennay looked around and frowned. Up on the mezzanine the shutter rattled its bolts again like the
gentlest of unquiet spirits, but that was the only sound.

‘No, there can’t be a window or door left open,’ she surmised after a moment of silence. ‘We opened few enough today and I bolted them all myself before Sarras
left.’

To confirm her thought she twitched open one of the long drapes that covered the enormous windows on that side of the hall. Through the mullioned windows she saw a few fat flakes of snow fall at
an angle. Clearly the breeze was strong enough to throw around any window that had been left open, not just make it tremble.

The young woman hesitated and returned in her mind to a few hours previously when the former lay brother, Sarras, had come up to her desk. Having been brought up in a monastery, the tall man was
wary of any strong-willed woman and tended to creep up to her desk like a deer ready to take flight, even more bundled up against the cold than Gennay.

They had checked the rooms together as always, moving methodically through the library to check the bolts on each window and lock the remaining doors until at last, Gennay would unlock the main
entrance and lock it again behind Sarras. It was a ritual that was less necessary now the main building work had been done, but one she felt a curious pleasure in its monastic formality –
quite aside from reassuring the young woman that she was secure there when alone after nightfall. With so much work to do before the official opening of the library, she couldn’t afford to
only keep to the few daylight hours of winter. The night watchman had been instructed to arrive only when the Hunter’s Moon was above the rooftops so for a few hours she was, unusually for a
woman of noble birth, quite alone in the library.

At the bottom of the stair Gennay stopped again, setting the lamp on a nearby table and cocking her head to listen. After half a minute or more she let her breath out in one long puff, satisfied
there was no breeze or movement coming from any of the open parts of the library. She wove her way around the workman’s tables where shelving and desks were being constructed and opened the
peep-hole set into the great main door. She had to stand on her tip-toes to look out and flinched when she did as a gust of icy wind rushed through the grille to catch her unawares.

A second try revealed the courtyard just as she had expected; empty of people, with an icy sheen on the cobbles and a little snow drifted up against the right-hand wall. Gennay could just about
pick out the swirling descent of a few snowflakes in the faint starlight and felt surprised that not more had fallen. As yet it was only a scattering, but the temperature had dropped dramatically
today and Narkang was readying itself for a sustained siege of white.

‘My thick boots tomorrow, I think,’ she said to herself, preferring to speak aloud and break the silence.

She snapped the peep-hole cover shut again, then whirled around. Somewhere behind her there had come a sound, barely audible over the closing hinge but distinct none the less.

‘Or was it?’ Gennay muttered. ‘Am I just imagining things at long last?’

She took a step forward, arms wrapped around her body until she realised she was acting like a frightened little girl. ‘Oh Gennay, if Emin was to see you now you’d never hear the end
of it. It’s a rat if anything at all – no bolts are going to stop them getting into a building of this size.’

She stamped her heel against the flagstone floor and listened to the echo race around the empty library. No scuttling sound followed it, no scrabble of a startled creature or anything else.

‘Well, there you are, it was your imagination,’ she declared loudly.

Despite her assurance, Gennay’s fingers went to a pocket in her dress and closed around the comforting shape of a knife handle. It was something Emin had quietly insisted that she carry,
despite the fact she was be escorted to and from the library each day by Pirn, her father’s most trusted retainer.

As soon as he’d heard she would be alone in the library with Sarras, Emin had given her a small dagger to keep on her person. Gennay’s protests that the timid scribe, Sarras, was
terrified of her had drawn only a sardonic smile from her younger brother and she’d eventually agreed to keep Emin from worrying. Now, however, she felt glad he’d insisted, however sure
she was about Sarras.

It was a strange little weapon; its blade no longer than the handle with a gently rippled edge that was sharp enough to shave with. With her thumb Gennay slipped off the toggle that kept it in
its leather sheath and advanced a few steps, listening all the time.

Once she reached the centre of the hall she stopped, knife still in her pocket. There were three doors ahead of her, each flanked by an empty bookcase that protruded out from the wall. To the
left was a thick door that led to the kitchens and store rooms behind, all currently unused. From where she stood, Gennay could see the bolts were closed, so she discounted that. It was thick
enough to mask most sounds and any thief stood behind it was going to stay there. The rear rooms did have access to the other wings, but it only took Gennay a moment to confirm that the doors
leading from each were just as securely fastened.

The sound came again, a slight scratching on the edge of hearing, no louder than the whisper of fingers brushing a page – except the reading rooms were empty. The shelves in two had been
completed and the first scrolls set upon them, but she’d checked and shut the doors herself. No one could have got in without her hearing from her desk, almost directly above the door.

‘Which means it’s a rat,’ she said with slight relief. She didn’t like the creeping creatures of course, but they were unavoidable in a sea-port and Gennay had seen
enough not to be frightened. Just to be sure, she went to fetch her lamp and moved it to a shelf where it would cast its light inside the room. Ever mindful, she checked it was secure and out of
the way in case the rat ran out and startled her, then moved forward and gave the door a thump.

Nothing happened, there was no sound from within at all. Gennay pulled her knife from her pocket and held it ready while she unlocked the door and pushed it open. It swung easily enough to
reveal a dark room four yards by six, containing a high shuttered window and a table in the middle. On the table was a small pile of books, one of which had half-slipped from the top and lay open
at an angle down the side of the pile.

‘A draught on the pages?’ Gennay wondered as she took a cautious pace forward. The room was steadfastly empty of living creatures, the only movement was her shadow stealing over the
shelves. ‘Ah, it must have slipped and the pages slipped one by one, rustling as they did so.’

In a flash her courage returned and Gennay marched into the room, closing the book with a firm snap and setting the pile straight. They were the first works to have been delivered by her most
unlikely resource, the Knights of the Temples.

In an effort to impose a high standard of literacy upon their young officers they required that each be taught something of a copyist’s skill. The result was far from the beautiful work
done by monks or a mage, but it served for business records and also Gennay’s purposes. The Knights of the Temples had many accounts of travel in addition to their collections of myth and
scripture, but were reluctant to release anything from their libraries that they had not gone to the expense of copying.

Just as she was finished a crash echoed through the hall and Gennay shrieked in alarm.

‘Mistress Gennay?’ called a concerned voice from behind the door, ‘Mistress? Is all well with you?’

Gennay gasped with relief, then laughed at herself. It had come from the main door, a wooden staff knocking on it most likely.

‘Yes Pirn,’ she called, hurrying forward. She opened the peephole again and saw a whiskery face pressed up against the grill, peering forward. ‘You gave me a fright,
that’s all. I’m perfectly fine.’

Quickly returning her knife to its sheath, Gennay unlocked the main door and pulled it open. Pirn marched on in, eyes scanning for danger and hand on his sword.

‘Peace, Pirn,’ Gennay said soothingly, ‘I am fine. I thought I heard a noise and when I went to investigate you banged on the door.’

‘A noise?’

‘It’s nothing, I’ve already checked. Just a book that slipped from a pile in one of the reading rooms.’

She pointed toward the open door behind her and Pirn nodded. He strode forward and poked his head inside. Satisfied there was no danger, the former soldier returned to the door and beckoned
inside his companion.

‘Come on then, Bewen,’ he said gruffly, ushering forward the night watchman who’d been loitering outside. Bewen hopped forward out of the cold and whipped a grey woollen cap
from his head before bowing to Gennay as best he could with a large fur coat in his arms.

‘I brought your thick coat,’ Pirn explained, ‘it’s got bitter since Lord Tsatach closed his eye.’

‘That was very kind of you.’ Gennay slipped on the coat and collected a thinner one from a hook behind the door, bundling it up in her arms. ‘Have a good night, Master
Bewen,’ she said once she was done. ‘Don’t be so foolish as I was and start imagining strange noises in the night.’